Susan's Tale, Part 3

We fell as one, rolling and sliding in a shower of rock and dust. Or rather, what I thought was rock; but it didn't hurt as much as it should have, and I later realised the debris was made up of chunks of the papery substance that we'd been examining above. Still, the angle was steep and the landing knocked the wind out of us both. I felt a twinge in my ankle - the one I'd hurt recently - and realised it hadn't fully recovered yet. I was going to have to be careful for a while, or I might end up with a painful sprain.

It's strange, thinking back on it now. When you're young you assume on some level that everything will be all right in the end. I'd seen enough death to know on an intellectual level that it wasn't so, but still there was that underlying confidence, that hopefulness. It never occurred to me that my ankle might still be troubling me all these years later.

Anyway, I had more pressing concerns at the time. As my eyes adjusted to the extremely dim light I could see that Grandfather was just lying there. I rolled over and grabbed his shoulders, shouting at him. He turned his head and waved a hand vaguely. "Do stop fussing, child, I'm perfectly fine. But I might not be if you keep shaking me like that!"

I hugged him. "Oh, Grandfather, you're okay," I said. Since he started coughing as soon as he finished speaking I was well aware that he was putting a brave face on things, but it was also obvious that now was no time to contradict him. I helped him sit up, and took stock of our surroundings. We appeared to have landed in another tunnel, running almost exactly 30 degrees clockwise of the one we'd been in when the quake hit, and sloping downwards with a camber of about 8 degrees. It's funny how details like that remain so clear; but then my sense of direction and timing has always been near-perfect, when I'm given a chance to focus.

The light flickered, interrupted by a shape moving at the top of the hole; and we heard Barbara's voice, faint and worried. I yelled back, at full volume. "Barbara! We're fine! We can't climb back up, though!"

There was a pause. "Hold on, Susan," she said, "Ian's gone back to fetch some rope." But even as she finished speaking I felt another tremor starting. "Grandfather, I think we'd better move further down the tunnel, just to be on the safe side."

"Yes, yes, just a moment." He was struggling to rise; I gave him my arm, and he didn't even complain. As he finally got to his feet the vibrations grew worse and he almost fell again, but I held on tightly and together we stumbled away from the hole.

Just in time. The entire roof caved in behind us, a huge cloud of dust billowed past, and we were in complete darkness.

Once the air had cleared a little and we could breathe again Grandfather struck one of his everlasting matches. He was hunched over, and held it up as he put his other hand on his knee to support himself. "As I thought. It's completely blocked. We'll have to find some other way out."

I knew he was right, really, but I wasn't able to leave it at that without pushing, just a little. "Couldn't we try to dig through? I'm sure Ian and Barbara will work at it from the other side."

He shook his head. "Hopeless! But this is a tunnel, is it not? One built by some intelligent being? So logically it must lead somewhere. And since we can't go that way" - he indicated the wall of debris - "we must go this way."

He straightened up, the sense of being in charge restoring some of his vigour. I kept hold of his arm and we set off down the tunnel.

It was hard going. The match didn't cast much light so we had to be careful not to trip, and breathing was difficult to begin with. That eased when we reached a junction about twenty minutes later; a faint breeze in the crossing tunnel helped to clear the air.

"Which way do you think we should go, Grandfather?"

"Hm? I don't know, I don't know." He paused and examined the tunnels, but they all looked identical. There wasn't much damage; one or two cracks, but the floor was clear of debris. He sighed, irritably. "Down here, one might as well toss a coin!"

He paused, raising a finger to his bottom lip. "No. Let's think this through, shall we? There's no point in going back the way we came, and the opposite direction simply leads further down; so we should go left or right, yes? And do you feel the way the air is blowing?"

"Yes, it's carrying the dust away to the right. So-"

"So we should go left, towards the source of the breeze."

"Because that must lead us back to the surface! That's wonderful!"

"Yes, well, we haven't got out quite yet, child. We don't know how far we might have to walk."

"But we know we're going the right way, now. It's just a matter of time."

He snorted. "We'd best be going, then. Don't dawdle, Susan!" And with that we set off. I was happy; he sounded much more his old self again.

The tunnel seemed to go on forever, curving gently to the left. I was paying close attention to the journey, just in case we needed to retrace our steps; but the breeze led us onwards, past numerous side tunnels. My mind drifted to Ian and Barbara, and I hoped they weren't too frantic with worry.

It was slow going, and boring too. We had to walk carefully because every so often we would come across fallen debris or a crack in the floor that could trip us up, and we had to be alert to spot the obstructions in the dim light of the match; but this didn't happen regularly enough to present much of a challenge.

Then the match went out.

"Drat the thing! These are supposed to be everlasting, not go out after five minutes. That's false advertising, that is - highly irregular."

"But grandfather, didn't you-" I caught his expression as he lit another match and decided not to finish the sentence - or point out that we'd been walking for almost an hour, which was impressive for one match. There was something else that worried me, though.

"I think this tunnel's leading us in a circle," I said. "We've gone about a third of the way round already."

"You could be right. If so, there must be some machinery keeping the air circulating. Keep those ears open."

We set off again. It was so quiet I didn't need to listen hard, but there was nothing to hear for another twenty minutes. Then I could make out a faint scritching sound, just on the edge of hearing. I stopped; grandfather did too, sitting down for a rest. I was nervous, and the noise was definitely getting louder. "That doesn't sound like a pump to me," I said.

He shook his head. "No. No, it doesn't. I think I might have miscalculated."

It was obvious by now that it was coming from behind the wall against which grandfather was leaning. We both backed away from it.

And then I screamed, as a monstrous head pushed its way through, mouth gaping wide.

Next Time:
Probably some meandering thoughts; but who can tell?